My friend had Dragon Warrior and I went over to his house to play it when we were kids, but I never felt compelled to buy it for myself. Same goes for the first Final Fantasy game. It wasn't until FF4 on the SNES that I got into RPGs fully. To this day I still have a hard time breaking the habit of calling it Dragon Quest instead of Dragon Warrior.
When Pokemon first came out I was covering it for The Dallas Morning News, so I was reviewing any kind of Pokemon ripoff. That included Dragon Warrior Monsters. My brother Jeff LOVED it and after I reviewed it, he confiscated my copy of the game!
Last year I got Dragon Quest Builders for Christmas. My brother Jeff also loves Minecraft and this is basically a mix of DQ and Minecraft, so he loved it, too.
My favorite Dragon Quest game is Rocket Slime on the DS. Have you ever played that one? Man it's so much fun. I wish the 3DS sequel would've come out in the US.
I wish I had time to play more DQ games, but I'd have to cut work and sleep out of my life and that's not going to happen. Can't play all the games out there, you know?